August 31, 2011

Inside the Campus: The Last Professor from Kelkar's Era Retires

June 30, 2011 was the last working day for Prof. Sullerey in Aerospace Engineering Department. He is the last of the faculty members who joined when Prof. P K Kelkar was Director of IIT Kanpur. We still have faculty members who were students during Prof. Kelkar's time, including one who joined IIT Kanpur a temporary job during his time, and later became a permanent faculty. I am sure that the legacy of Prof. Kelkar will continue long after everyone who had any interaction with him is gone from the campus. But, in some sense, an era has come to an end.

Courtesy : Inside the Campus: The Last Professor from Kelkar's Era Retires:

August 30, 2011

Message to Parents - 7 Year old Entrepreneur


Courtesy of the Zamary family

What did you do at the age of 7?

I am quite sure you didn't start you first company then. Even I started my first profitable business at the age of 10! Which my school cruelly shut down, but more on that later.

Here we have Connor Zamary a 7 year old kid from Ohio didn't just think of a business idea at the age of innocence, but made his own presentations, pitched it to investors, hired developers & launched a business! & the last part is in bold because even some people from my college who have everything else, haven't been able to start a business! & they are all, innovative people with a knack of things.

Our protagonist (simply put, our HERO of this post) 7-year-old Connor Zamary has already started his own app company, Toaster Pop, an iPhone game that involves spreading butter on toast. He's a full fledged technology entrepreneur. "He pitched investors, made his own PowerPoint, filled out the paperwork for his LLC all by himself, has done conference calls with the West Coast developers," said his father Craig Zamar.


Connor vetted and selected a developer to build the app and took feedback from friends and family into account during the development process, which btw a lot of people a lot older than Connor do not do. Though one thing Connor isn't allowed yet is his own e-mail account. He has a way around it, he uses his father's to conduct company business. Could you have thought of that, I mean, think simple at its best!

The IDEA : The proclaimed most important thing about a start-up.
"My dad was telling me about an old fashion toaster since I never saw one before. Then it just came to me to create an app, where toast would pop out of the toaster, land on a plate and you would have to butter it with butter," Connor writes.

That sums up the 99-cent Toaster Pop app pretty well. It's a family-friendly game designed with kids in mind. It starts with butter, moves up through jams, and then mixes it up with a spread called "The Works." Connor's personal favorite toast condiment is butter.
Connor says the most challenging part of launching his own app was preparing the pitch for investors. "I was nervous," he writes. If you are smirking at the last statement, everyone is. He's already looking ahead to version 2.0. The updated app idea is mapped out and hanging on the family's refrigerator.

The story does not end here.

Connor's 6-year-old sister Annabelle has an app idea. If she gets her pitch together, Connor may become an investor in his sister's own app business.

Courtesy : http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20093715-1/meet-connor-a-7-year-old-iphone-app-developer/#ixzz1WVaJgzH7

My Personal Comment -  To all the parents & well-wishers around the world who think, entrepreneurship is risky for their child, please read this post!


Thankfully, my parents are not in that genre, they actually inspired me to do something on my own, more on that later.

How Social Media moved a country to end Corruption!

You got it, another post on Anna Hazare & his fight against corruption. We all know how this Indian Army Veteran & Gandhian moved the whole country to a fight against corruption & finally won, at least partially. But what I emphasizing in this blog post is how he (or at least his supporters & his team) extensively used social media to move people to the cause.

Believe it or not, Anna Hazare is in the list of top 10 "Online Brands" of India! 

For a whole week, he was the SINGLE BIGGEST trending topic on twitter in India & had a fanbase of 380,000 people on facebook in just about a month, with more then 50,000 joining in in just 1 day!
The Official India Against Corruption (IAC) Facebook page received over 71,000 'likes' and 13,000 comments for mere 170 posts updated in the month of August. However, MTV India (Facebook.com/mtvindia, 2.9 million fans) and Dominos (Facebook.com/dominospizzaindia, 0.5 million fans) received 21,000 'likes' (for 59 posts) and 11740 'likes' and 1568 comments (for 41 posts) respectively, during the same duration.

Anna also has a Klout Score  of 80, that is higher than even Amitabh Bachhan & is probably the second highest in India! For those of you not from the realm (yeah, I saw Thor recently) of social media, Klout is a score of your influence in social media, mostly your twitter influence though. For eg. I have a Klout score of over 24.

Moreover, there used to be a time, when I typed Anna in Google & it suggested Anna Kournikova & not Anna Hazare, so I guess that says a lot for Anna!


August 27, 2011

Google Blogger v/s Wordpress


Blogger v/s Wordpress

The grand battle between Blogger & Wordpress is something heavy on every new blogger's mind, including my own, when I had decided to start blogging. This is not one of those posts where I will list out merits of both, there are already a lot of posts on the internet that describe & compare features, merits & de-merits of both, wordpress & blogger, & other blogging platforms too, for that matter.

For me, I will tell you the reasons why I chose Blogger over Wordpress (both wordpress.org & wordpress.com)
  1. Advanced Customization : The most crucial reason was the ability to tweak with the HTML in blogger. By editing the HTML & the design elements of blogger, I could design a blog as I wanted.
  2. Javascript : Ability to add Javascript, even wordpress gives you the ability to add HTML, but no javascript on wordpress, whereas on blogger you can add as much Javascript as you want!
  3. Hosting : A lot of people like to host their own blogs, I don't, that is one less task for me. On blogger, I can simply pay attention to the content part rather than the hosting part as I'd have to do otherwise on wordpress.org blogs, even with the "1 click installs" that many web hosts offer. For wordpress.com, it made no sense as I'd have had to buy a custom domain package & other advanced features, why pay for something that is available for free! ;)
  4. Multiple Blogs : I operate multiple blog, Official Jewelove Fine Jewelry Blog, The Ruby King Blog & My Personal Blog. I don't know how it goes on wordpress, but I knew that it was very easy to do, using one interface, on Blogger.
Those were the reasons for me, I don't know what are your requirements, if you want to discuss, feel free to post in the comments below!

    P.S. For people obsessed with stats, there are about 150 million public blogs on the internet (courtesy : wikipedia) & exactly 55,956,313 of them are hosted on wordpress.com i.e. about a third. Blogger does not publish similar stats.

    Vote for your favorite platform below!





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    pollcode.com free polls 

    Anna Hazare's half-victory is a win-win for all

    Just read a post at firstpost.com, since I cannot put it better, I will give you the link to that post, Anna Hazare's half-victory is a win-win for all

    nice read.

    Anna Hazare, Indian Army veteran, Gandhian, Father of The Jan Lokpal
    For those who have no idea, Anna Hazare is an army veteran, social activist & a Gandhian who fasted for 11 straight days to have an anti-corruption bill passed in India. Though he didn't get the Jan Lokpal he wanted, in the end it was a victory for India & its people. More at the link above.



    New Venture coming up!

    I had so much of work to do over this weekend, but the whole Saturday went into an important designing session with Shubham. I am not the type who pass time uselessly, & I certainly did not pass time today. Had a straight on 5 hour session, right after Nuclear Engineering class with Prof. Prabhat Munshi (those are classes I won't miss for a 100 bucks!), with Shubham on our new venture, Vuelta!

    P.S., my new venture is not about Nuclear Engineering, not just yet, wait till I take over GE, then hopefully I will launch some Nuclear Power venture! :D

    Anyway, enough of wishful thinking, back to the present, me & Shubham, the 2 of us  are launching a new venture & we sat down for 5 straight hours to design the brochures & posters of Vuelta!

    Will keep you updated on it in the upcoming blog posts!

    P.S. : If you own/run a school or have a contact in the senior management of a school, please drop in the details in the comments or drop us an email at MailVuelta@gmail.com or sambhavk@iitk.ac.in

    Feast in Hall 10!

    Feast in Hall 10! for Rs. 15 only, like 30 cents!

    if you haven't yet had your dinner, join the disq & dinner in Hall 10, food's pretty good actually!

    Politics & Family : an anology

    Son : Daddy, what is politics?

    Dad : Your Mom cooks, so lets say she's the Goverment, I earn so me Officer, maid works so she'd be Labourer, you are public & our new born is the Future of the Country.

    Son : I got it dad! Yesterday night, Officer was enjoying with the labourer in the kitchen, the Government was sleeping, nobody cared about the public & the Future of the Country was crying.


    post originally shared by my friend Prafulla Shukla.

    August 26, 2011

    Peta launching P0rn website!

    PETA (People for the ethical Treatment of Animals), already extremely popular for both its mission of protecting animals & its controversial marketing tactics, is now taking the marketing tactics to the next level!

    PETA is launching a p0rn website!

    PETA has officially announced that it will launch a porn website, www.peta.xxx to attract public attention towards animal cruelty. No idea how that will turn out, but I am sure a lot of people are definitely looking forward to it!



    PETA Controversial

    PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) is very popular not just for its mission of saving animals & stopping animal cruelty but also very popular for its controversial tactics, advertisement campaigns, nude celebrity photoshoots, p0rnstar photoshoots & controversial slogans!

    Here are some of the best of PETA controversials.












    August 25, 2011

    Amazing Weekend, E-Weekend!

    Had an amazing E-weekend! Rahul Roushan & Anil K. Rajvanshi were in campus, learnt a lot about social entrepreneurship & rural upliftment. Cam across another entrepreneur whose story is strikingly similar to my own in a lot of ways, Rahul Roushan, creator of Faking News gave wonderful insights into his venture(s) & his entrepreneurial journey. It was definitely worth listening.

    Besides this, the key note of the event was, how e-cell mixed up Rahul's photo.




















    So you can see the goof up clearly there, it was sad, but funny!

    August 22, 2011

    Crush the Castle - Awesome Game like Angry Birds!


    This Awesome game was the first one & Angry Birds followed suite! but Crush The Castle is free!

    Go Ahead & enjoy!
    Nothing like a free game, except for free probably free jewelry by Jewelove!

    August 13, 2011

    Rakhis are here! :D

    Rakhi is here & so are a lot of rakhis! :D

    August 3, 2011

    College Girl Stripped by Teacher!

    College girl was stripped and searched, just to find a cell phone.

    This happened at the Prince Venkateshwara College of Arts and Sciences near Selaiyur, Tamil Nadu. The girl was taken to rest room and stripped there by the physical education teacher. Later, 150 students went to the Vice Chancellor of Madras University to file a complaint.
    P.S. : The news is courtesy Yahoo India News!

    This is really shocking! Why the heck would someone do such a heinous & disgusting act?


    This guy should be hung from his balls.